Example of a Last Night Together Scene

They had until 6 AM. Her flight was at eight. Neither of them was sleeping. His apartment was lit by the city — no lamps, just the amber and blue of streetlights through curtains they hadn't bothered closing. She was wearing his shirt and sitting cross-legged on his bed, eating takeout they'd ordered at midnight because cooking felt like wasting time. "Tell me something I don't know about you," she said. "We have—" she checked her phone, "—five hours and forty-two minutes." "I can't whistle." "Something real." He set down his chopsticks. "I almost told you I loved you at the harbor last week. You were looking at the boats and the wind was doing something to your hair, and I opened my mouth and nothing came out because I knew if I said it, tonight would be unbearable." "It's already unbearable." "I know." She crawled across the bed to him. Put her face against his neck. He smelled like soap and the curry they'd just eaten and underneath that, something she'd been memorizing for three weeks — the specific, unreplicable scent of his skin. "Three weeks isn't enough time," she said. "No." "And Kyoto is very far away." "Yes." "And we're idiots for starting something we knew had an expiration date." He pulled her into his lap. Held her face in both hands. Looked at her the way people look at things they're about to lose. "I don't regret a single second," he said. She kissed him. Slow and thorough and aching. The kind of kiss that's already a memory while it's happening. They didn't sleep. They talked and touched and memorized each other until the light changed from amber to grey to pale gold, and the alarm they'd set went off like a verdict.

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